Quick update from last week’s "Urgent, pls call - Jim" post. My dear friend David pointed out that the “pull a fist out of a bucket of water” reference is actually from a beautiful poem "Indispensable Man" by Saxon White Kessinger. It is reported that Dwight Eisenhower carried a copy of this poem in his wallet.
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It was either a drought or a deluge that would push me into the pattern….. if an RFP or client request came in I cranked up the machine and produced an amazing proposal….. well, perhaps not so amazing. It didn’t matter whether we were qualified to do the work or wanted to do the work, I reactively spit out a proposal.
In droughts I definitely felt the pressure to keep myself and my team busy and that immature and reactive instinct to respond was understandable. But in the deluges it didn’t make sense – maybe one part “make hay while the sun shines” and another part of feeling I’m on a roll and can’t lose.
I successfully convinced myself to propose on work that was not in our zone with some very good reasons:
The client expects us to bid – yes, maybe sometimes that is the case – providing a stalking horse bid in exchange for some good will is a weak trade. My experience has been the opposite. Clients and even those scoundrels in procurement were always understanding and appreciative when we explained why we were not going to submit a proposal.
We want to expand into this new area – ok, yes often times we have to stretch to gain experience in a new service area. But trying to do that on a random incoming opportunity is risky – proactively shaping an opportunity with the right scope and right client is far better.
We can’t let a competitor in – ahhhh, the old defensive boxing out move. If we are doing great work why would I be nervous of my client getting a glimpse of someone else? Doing poor work on something we are not qualified for is a great way to introduce a competitor.
It’s a great development opportunity for a senior manager – hmmmm, forcing a promising manager to waste their time on something we are not likely to win and if we do we will struggle to do it well? How magnanimous of me…
I have since learned that these are all really bad excuses - swinging at pitches outside my strike zone is not a good idea many reasons.
· I was winning very few
· Is a tremendous waste of valuable resources,
· confuses the client about where you add the most value
· signals desperation and self interest to the client,
· discourages your team,
· signals areas of weakness to competitors
Any consultant with even a hint of analytical DNA has read/studied Michael Lewis’s 2003 classic novel Moneyball …. or at a minimum enjoyed the Brad Pitt/Jonah Hill screen version. Lewis spins an intriguing tale of how Billy Beane and Peter Brand revolutionize baseball by using data and analytics (Sabermetrics) to make decisions – a radical departure from intuition and traditional/superficial metrics used by most managers.
Some of the changes he brought were very obvious in retrospect – using On Base Average instead of batting average as a measure of batting success uncovered new opportunities. Other areas such as pitching performance get into very arcane measures that adjust for ball parks, fielding team etc,
One fascinating area of baseball statistics is “ Plate Discipline ” ….. this is the epitome of a deep rabbit hole …. Fangraphs has an entire data field of 11 plate discipline stats for every batter in the MLB. These stats are aimed at measuring how disciplined and effective batters are at swinging at pitches inside and outside the strike zone.
The trends are not surprising – those batters that swing less at pitches outside the strike zone are much more productive – there are some super slugger exceptions…. Vlad Guerrero
It seems that the ultimate measure is wRC+ ….but we have to pull back out of this rabbit hole now….
In consulting the traditional measures of sales growth, billability, average bill rate, margin, etc. are obviously important. But one of the best ways to understand what is really happening in a consulting organization and your practice is digging into Competitive Win Rate (CWR).
I can hear the eye rolling now…. “Consulting and clients are too complex to reduce to “batting averages” – it involves people and relationships and a highly dynamic market.”
Yea – right – sounds like someone who is either too lazy to look ……or afraid of what the facts might reveal about how the team is operating…..
On the surface CWR is simple. Just add up the value (not number) of competitive proposals won over the total value of all competitive proposals. CWR below 50% is a concern – sustained CWR below 40% indicates a very low performing team swinging at every pitch. This is a very expensive waste of resources.
On the other end CWR above 75% is also concerning. It may seem counterintuitive – but this may indicate that the organization is not expanding into new areas, not going after new work, resting on their laurels or pricing too low.
Slicing the CWR data by service area, industry, region, client, client type, project size, competitor, even partner can provide deep insights to the state of play in any area….. it is especially insightful when tracked over time……
Of course this can get as complicated as batter discipline stats…. What is the sole source %, what is the % of work not asked to propose….
But CWR is a great place to start….
Over time I felt more comfortable letting those bad pitches go right on by ….. I realized I wasn’t winning very many anyway… and when I did it often did not end very well…
See that RFP coming at you right now? Is it really in your strike zone? Swing? Pass?
What are the best criteria for cranking up the team to develop and write a killer proposal? Let me know what you think……
Have a great weekend !
Walt